This invention relates to imaging systems and more particularly to a system and method for forming images with a minimum lapse of contrast and for extracting information from grossly underexposed film where the little information that has been captured by the film is nearly lost in the noise, such as base fog.
It is well known that on occasion a photograph may be so grossly underexposed that desired information is not readily extractable from the photograph. In such a case, attempts at enhancing the contrast have been carried out by successive printings into very contrasted media. Such a process usually fails due to the inherent contrast losses in conventional printing systems. This technique does not achieve much success for optical densities less than about 0.1 above base fog. Optical density is defined at log.sub.10 I.sub.O /I.sub.T where I.sub.O is the incident intensity and I.sub.T is the transmitted intensity.